I have this same issue sometimes. It was more noticable when I was running TF2 under wine, and especially when running off a btrfs filesystem. It appears that TF2 is loading something from the hard drive when these things happen. This first time around the data isn't in the cache and so the lag occurs. What filesystem to you have Steam installed on? Perhaps I could give you some advice as how to tweak the filesystem.

I have this same issue sometimes. It was more noticable when I was running TF2 under wine, and especially when running off a btrfs filesystem. It appears that TF2 is loading something from the hard drive when these things happen. This first time around the data isn't in the cache and so the lag occurs. What filesystem to you have Steam installed on? Perhaps I could give you some advice as how to tweak the filesystem.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'filesystem'.

I agree with you, it's definitely fetching something because if I bleed twice in the span of a minute or so it doesn't lag.

I have the same problem, whenever I meet a sniper with jarate or shiv = dead :/. After the first time it stops lagging. Also I'm using AMD HD 6310 1.6ghz Lubuntu 12.10 64bitEDIT: It also freezes when I look at water and dive.

I have the same problem, whenever I meet a sniper with jarate or shiv = dead :/. After the first time it stops lagging. Also I'm using AMD HD 6310 1.6ghz Lubuntu 12.10 64bitEDIT: It also freezes when I look at water and dive.

Basically, whenever a shader(?) or whatever covers the screen, TF2 lags for a second. Which 90% of the time means that you die.

Yes it does.

As others have suggested it often feels like there is contention for graphics ram or something since repeating the action often works without an issue, but going back later can trigger it again.

Is there a cvar to show or graph, graphics ram usage in source?

I'm reminded of the bug in Big picture mode where it picks a lower resolution because it thinks you don't have enough graphics ram - which is wrong because there's more than enough on the cards. Could a similar bug be causing the game not to use it all? perhaps that was just with an older version of catalyst and no longer an issue.

If you use one of the high fps configs the longer stuttering is more like a blip, you feel it, but it doesn't last - which means you might actually live to tell the tale Not ideal if you like the eye candy, but better than nothing)

Hopefully someone will fix it. I keep noticing 'improved the performance of the linux version' in TF2 changelogs - I've either seen the same changelog twice or it's been in 2 different ones (all these creative people at Valve, can't they be more imaginative in their changelog? Or even more specific?) Perhaps some of these changes are related to these issues?

I suppose this explains why the training mode works well for AMD users, since the bots don't really use these weapons - although there is still water in a few of the maps.